


Critical Point

by Noscere



Series: Cladograms and Phylogenies [5]
Category: RWBY
Genre: F/M, Failing relationships, Falling Out of Love, Long-Distance Friendship, Long-Distance Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 09:53:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6465700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noscere/pseuds/Noscere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only at a specific temperature and pressure can liquid, solid and gas exist together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Uncertainty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All measurements have some unknown in their magnitude.

It’s on their first year anniversary dinner date that Neptune stops smiling and asks, “Weiss, what do we have in common?”

She looks at her slender fingers, and carefully lifts them off the pristine tablecloth. “Well… I… I…”

She searches, and yet finds nothing. What do they have in common? They come from different schools. Good grades? Hardly something to base a relationship on. Their roles as Huntsmen and Huntress? Jaune and Weiss are both training to protect humanity, but that doesn’t make them girlfriend and boyfriend. Their wealthy backgrounds? As if. This union – no, relationship, it is not political nor based on monetary gain like those of so many other heiresses. She is a Schnee, and she will break free of her predecessor’s path.

“We’re beautiful?” she offers, though it rings hollow even in the crowded Atlesian restaurant.

Neptune’s brow falls into tight, furrowed lines. He considers the wine glass at his side, looks at the way the light circles the rim and drips into the dark red fluid.

“I’m sorry, König, I… I just don’t know beyond the obvious.” She pushes a flake of sautéed tuna into the wasabi aioli. “But I know there’s a lot I love about you. I love the way you laugh, and fight, and smile…”

A small smile creeps up his face. “I guess that’s a start, snowflake.”

“It is,” she says, though it doesn’t dull the panic creeping into her stomach. She is an heiress. She has seen that relationships – be they political or friendly – cannot proceed without a plan. “W-well… what made you interested in me?”

“Your smile,” he says, as naturally as breathing. The sound of his voice seems to wrap around her hands, fitting them like silk gloves. The rubber-band tension in her shoulders eases. “I- it was during the food fight. When Ruby told you guys, ‘ _justice will be swift! It’ll be painful! It will be delicious!’_ You cried ‘ _yeah!’_ It was terrifying, and absolutely gorgeous.”

Weiss laughs. “That’s what caught your attention.”

“Well, that,” Neptune flashes a wink with the confidence of a boyfriend who knows he’s skirting the limits, “and your incredibly good looks.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she says, but winds her leg around his own under the table.

Neptune laughs, and Weiss pushes the misgivings out of her heart.

“Open wide.” She spears the flake of tuna and holds it before his lips. “Come on. It’s delicious, König.”

“You know I hate the ocean,” he says with an exaggerated pout.

“You can do this for me. Somebody should finish this dish before the paparazzi show up.”

He coughs. “Wellll… we could give them something else to focus on.”

“Neptune, I’m still the heiress, we can’t…”

Her words die off as he presses a kiss to her hand.

“Lewd,” she says past her grin. She can barely see the flash of a camera from the other side of the street.

“There you go. Five minutes of fame.” Neptune sets her hand down and mimes flexing. “Handsome boyfriend heroically rescues heiress from the paparazzi! All yours, for the price of this dinner.”

She taps him over the head. “I can't believe you sometimes”

“Love you too!”

As she watches him flex, suit stretching over toned muscles, she can't understand why she ever doubted if their relationship could last.

 

 


	2. Kinetics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reaction does not proceed unless there is sufficient energy to overcome the activation energy.
> 
> Sound bytes and pixels can't replace flesh and blood.

They see each other, at most, sixteen times a year. There is no time for whirlwind romances when Weiss is set to inherit the Schnee Dust Company next year and Neptune will be a TA at Haven Academy for the combat instructor. 

They speak in letters – encrusted in Atlesian and Mistralian stamps, unless one of the duo is traveling and tucks a post-card into the envelope – photos sent over encrypted channels (Weiss, posing only in a bikini; Neptune, bare except for a strategically placed hand), text messages while Weiss is meeting with investors and quick phone calls while Neptune is in the middle of nowhere.

 

“You have got to call me at better times,” he huffs.

Weiss can almost taste the blood flowing down his face. She imagines him hunched over, leaning heavily on his guan dao, hard muscle coiling and tensing as the last of the adrenaline wears off. His ghost accompanies her, as it has for the six months since she last saw him. She reclines against the four-poster canopied bed, and tries not to think of how it fits two much better than one. Her hand creeps down her belly, sliding towards the elastic of her panties. She imagines his gun-callused palms instead and heat flashes through her thighs. 

“Are you hurt?”

“Nah. Just scratched up. The tournament took a lot out of me, but I won, and I’m feeling pretty good about that.”

“Mmm. We should go out and celebrate when you get back.” Her fingers dip around her lower lips. She thinks about the way his thin stubble would scratch against her skin. “There’s a new Vacuoan restaurant. I think you’d like it.”

“We could get Valean. I know you miss Beacon.”

“It’s been a decade since I graduated, König. I miss _you_.”

His voice brims with love and pain. “I do too, snowflake. Going to bed soon?”

“Indeed.” She stretches. The silk sheets rustle in the quiet of the bedroom, creating staticky sounds that feed back to her Scroll. “I wouldn’t mind having you here… you could warm me up.”

Neptune chuckles. Something soft shifts against the speaker. Tape tears and sticks onto leather with a gluey _shluck_. “Don’t give me ideas, snowflake. I’m… well, I could do without a certain situation right now.”

She harrumphs, even though she knows she should not be envious. She was hoping they could have some time together. But no, after six months of waiting, she must settle for a figment of her imagination instead of the man himself. It is easier to imagine him when his voice is in her ears, crooning his image into life.

Weiss works a finger into herself. “You should make it up to me when you’re home.”

“Oh, I will, Weiss.” His voice is tinged with the hint of a groan. “Don’t you worry about that.”

She moans softly into the speaker.

“That’s waiting for you, König…” 

Neptune is silent for a moment.

“Fuck, Weiss. That’s _not_ where I need blood right now.”

“Remember… when you get home.”

“I know. It’s gonna be a while, snowflake.”

“I know.”

A heavy silence falls, and in it lies the solitude of two lonely hearts. 

“You should go to sleep," he says eventually. "It’s late in Atlas.”

“And you should patch yourself up.”

“I _know_ ,” he suddenly snaps. “You don’t need to always boss me around, Weiss.”

The dam holding back months of arguments snaps.

 

“I’m not bossing you around!” Her hand stops moving below her panties. “I’m worried about you!”

“I’m an adult, Weiss, I know how to take care of myself!”

“ _I_ have a desk job. No one is gunning for me anymore. _You_ are a Huntsman. You’re off travelling the world and Dust knows when I’ll see you– what if you die in a tournament? You could get your brains bashed out, and–“

“I’m not going to die.”

“Well, I don’t know that!” She huffs, already regretting the call. Why do most of their calls end in arguments and sore hearts on each side?

Silence falls over the bedroom.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I… I should listen to you.”

“No, no, you’re right. I need to take better care of myself.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

They linger on the phone, both unwilling to go.

“I love you,” she whispers, and the emptiness of the bedroom weighs down on her heart. The occasional stab of guilt lances through her chest. Weiss doesn’t know if she’s more afraid of being alone than losing Neptune. She doesn’t want to know the answer. It might not the answer she seeks.

“I love you too.”

Neptune disconnects. Weiss slides her finger out and clutches her pillow. She desires touch, proof that her lover exists and loves her. She imagines a hard and hot body pressed against her body instead of a fluffy and sleek cushion.

It’s not enough to quell the loneliness.


	3. Steady State

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the reaction starts, we assume the concentration of intermediates remains constant compared to the decrease in reactant or increase in product.

Their time together, when they get it, is short and to the point: the minute Neptune comes to her apartment in downtown Atlas, their clothes are on the floor and his lips are on hers like a force of nature. In flesh, the loneliness is forgotten; in flesh, the sins and arguments are forgiven.

“Moving a little fast, aren’t we?” she asks as he fumbles with the clasp of her bra.

“I can’t help it,” he pants against her skin. His voice dies into a whine as she slides her fingers along his length. “I missed you so much. And now I have you, and I want you.”

“Louder,” Weiss says, circling his tip with an ice-painted nail. “I want to hear you.”

“I want you.” He sucks on the hollow of her neck, drawing a cry from her throat. “Please, snowflake. I want you on top of me. I want to feel you. I want you.”

She pins him against the floor, spreading his limbs like a butterfly on a display board.

“I love you,” she says, settling onto his hips.

This is a dance they know well, and she draws it out to punish him. _Look what you could have had, if you came back during Spring Break_ , Weiss thinks as she centers him between her lower lips and grinds down. She slides easily against him, like the wind caressing the waves. She tastes desperation in the air, sees the hunger swelling in his eyes. _Look what you could have lost, if you were careless during a hunt_.

Neptune whimpers. “I’m sorry!” He reaches up to knead her breasts, gun-callused fingers coaxing her nipples into hard peaks. “Please, Weiss, I want _you_. Please!”

She straddles his hips and lines him up. “Just so you remember what’s waiting for you back home.”

His eyes roll back. “You’re amazing,” he says as his girth fills her.

Weiss hisses and sinks down, down, until her hips are flush against his and _dust,_ she missed the way he feels inside her.

 

In moments like this, sweat-soaked and fast-paced, Weiss loves him with all her being. She loves the way he feels beneath her – blizzard buffeting, muscle stretching and tensing like a tree bowed by the weight of snow; loves the way his thrusts quicken just before he comes inside her; and in flesh, she loves him like she is dying and he is her last link to life.

_Is this lust or love?_ She wonders, _and is it right to confuse the two?_

 

Weiss thinks it is not a healthy relationship. Outside of the bedroom, she can see her respect for her boyfriend cracking and crumbling in a thousand places: she hates the way Neptune forgoes arguing with her in favor of immediate agreement, and then he goes and performs the subject of their argument as if there was never a fight. She doesn’t like the way he treats women like goddesses: to be seen, and respected and heard, but never equals made of flesh and blood. But she is afraid of the silence that will come if she leaves. Their relationship is a dichotomy of wants, and have nots, and never is that clearer when they make love.

And it is a process of making love – she can almost recreate that which was lost, though she can never truly recapture the feeling.

Weiss rides him hard – he thrusts up and grips her hips, hard enough to bruise – she whimpers and his grip eases, but this is what she has come to expect. Neptune wants harder, rougher, fiercer: he wants the crash of waves against cliffs and the riptide pulling him under, when she is the slow cracking of sea ice and the iceberg grinding against solid steel. Weiss wants him longer, coasting open seas rather than riding rapids, and sometimes he listens.

But it has been six months since Weiss last saw him: from January to June, all she had was pixels and soundbytes. Some part of her body desires this hard-fast proclamation of love – it hurts, but in a good way. She feels alive when he rakes her back with his finger nails and when she leans down, pausing to lick up the side neck, and bites down on the pulse in his jugular. This is primal, this is feral: this is the antithesis of a stuffy boardroom and starched suits.

“Harder!” he gasps, his pupils blown wide. She sinks her teeth into his skin, shakes her head a little, and pinpricks of blood leap to her lips. “Harder! Weiss! Fuck! I– I–“

She kisses him, worships his sun-kissed skin with her lips.

“Go on, König.”

Neptune screams – wordless, lungs gasping for air, foam flecking his lips – and thrusts hard. He is quicksand in her hands and around her legs, and she can’t resist its lure.

And so she strokes his hair, as he rides out the last of his climax, and murmurs, “ _I love you, I love you”_ into his skin.

 

Her lover lies slack against the silk sheets. He swats her belly with a lazy hand. “Off, please…” Neptune’s eyes are unfocused. “Refractory period…”

Weiss giggles and slides off him with a wet _pop_! “It doesn’t sound very sexy when you say it that way.”

“Snowflake, that’s because it isn’t.” His cum slides down her thighs, mingling with her fluids. Neptune gives her an appreciative grin. “Though… I have to say, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is sore and spongy.”

“Should I finish alone?” Weiss asks, fingers already between her legs.

He reaches for her. “Come here. It’s the least I owe you, love.”

She inches over and lays back against the silk sheets. Neptune sits up, eyes roving over her flat stomach and small breasts. He smiles.

“Nothing short of perfect, snowflake.”

“You flatter me.”

“Nothing less than what you deserve.” He crooks his finger and slides it in – she can feel him twirling his finger, searching for that nub of flesh–

“Hmm. What does this do?” he asks, batting his eyes, and starts flicking at the spot.

Weiss keens – she centers herself on the rhythm of his finger, but it's no use. She's held fast in a current that tugs her this way and that way, and will not surrender her to the surface.

“Don’t you dare stop.”

“Wasn’t planning to,” he replies, settling in between her legs. “Unless–“

“König!”

She gasps for breath as he laps up her fluids and kisses her bud – she grabs a fistful of the blankets and his hair to pull him closer.

 

Neptune remembers this time: instead of dropping asleep after coming, he takes her long and slow, rocking her up and down until she’s breathless and twitching.

He finally withdraws, panting for breath. To her delight, he does not collapse beside her and say, _“sorry, love, I don’t have any more to give_.” He gives her his hand, rubbing fast and hard against her clit, and she takes.

“I love you,” he says in a litany, a prayer to the old gods. Heat builds within her belly as Neptune draws her tight, like a guitar string plucked and ready to let go. “You’re amazing, snowflake, I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” she says, and means it as Neptune rubs her the right way and bright lights pop before her eyes.

She shudders – once, twice – tosses her head and her hair fans out in a wave of iceberg white. Weiss barely notices the wistful grin that spreads up Neptune’s face as she collapses beside him.

He places an arm around her shoulder and pulls her close.

“We good?” he asks, his breath tickling her cheek.

“Good to go, König,” she replies, and kisses him on the nose.

 

 


End file.
